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Sam and Silo, 1/28/25

You know what would be awkward? If you were a corrupt city official taking kickbacks from a local sporting goods supplier, and one of the things they produced was “rebounders” for soccer practice, sometimes referred to as “kickbacks,” and you pitched them an idea for a small version. That’s pretty much the only circumstance where you’d ever say “Where’s that little kickback we discussed? No, I am not talking about football” to someone on the phone, which would also require you to be using “football” in the non-American sense even though you’re an American. It’s a vanishingly rare scenario, which is why it’s kind of amazing to see it captured in today’s Sam and Silo.

Blondie, 1/28/25

As I long ago noted on here, as a child I read Peanuts anthologies obsessively, and I knew what the context of a sigh was because the characters were always sighing, but I didn’t realize what physical noise was being described so I would just say “sigh” aloud at times when one might sigh, and no adult corrected me for years, presumably because they found it very funny. In my defense sometimes Peanuts would just drop the word in word balloons, so I’m not sure what I was supposed to think. Anyway, in today’s Blondie, I guess Mr. Dithers is supposed to be smacking his lips as he enjoys a delicious donut, but I’d prefer to think he’s saying “Smack!” with the implication being that this delicious donut is taking him to the same state of euphoria that a junkie experiences after injecting heroin into their veins.

Hi and Lois, 1/28/25

A thing I feel very certain saying about Hi Flagston is that he has exactly one friend, and it’s Thirsty Thurston, which means that either (a) they’re on a two-man bowling team and Hi showed up tonight and Thirsty, probably drunk and belligerent, demanded to be captain of the team, and Hi sheepishly backed down, or (b) he’s on a team with a few acquaintances or maybe just people that the bowling league arbitrarily assigned together, and the rest of them decided Hi was a drip and a loser and pulled off some sort of coup, much to his humiliation. I think either of these scenarios would’ve frankly been a more interesting comic strip than this little “oh no, Lois briefly thought the family’s finances were in crisis” switcheroo.

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Tina’s Groove, 1/24/25

A thing about being a monarch is that nobody can stop you from doing all sorts of awful sicko stuff, and usually this takes the form of wars or religious persecution or what have you, but sometimes it just means they get to play out their sadistic whims. A particularly sadistic one is “raising a baby that nobody ever speaks to in the hopes that it will talk and we’ll learn what God’s original language is,” and there really must be something to this because supposedly four different rulers — Pharaoh Psamtik I, Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II, King James IV of Scotland, and the Mughal Emperor Akbar — supposedly tried it. There’s some doubt that any of these experiments really took place, although the recorded end of Frederick’s — “But he laboured in vain, for the children could not live without clappings of the hands, and gestures, and gladness of countenance, and blandishments” — seems grimly plausible.

Anyway, it doesn’t sound like Greg’s upbringing was that extreme, but still, it does seem like he’s the subject of some kind of experiment? Maybe to see if, never having met another soul outside his family in his whole sad sack life, he’d fall in love with the anxious, depressive protagonist of Tina’s Groove? She had a boyfriend a a couple weeks ago, but she’s on the prowl for hot (?) friends’ cousins now, apparently!

Blondie, 1/24/25

Speaking of people isolated from outside stimulus, I will note that Blondie appears to be hearing “I am woman, hear me roar,” a line from a Helen Reddy song released in 1971, for the first time, and I would actually like to see an analysis of what parts of her brain are “modern suburban wife and caterer” and what parts are “flapper girl from the 1930s.” I think that’d be a real interesting experiment, honestly! Not sure if we could do it with an MRI machine or what, I leave the implementation details to the eggheads.

Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, 1/24/25

I was going to suggest that Hootin’ Holler was so isolated from mainstream society that its inhabitants are ignorant of even basic cryptid information, which explains why Jughaid seems to confuse “snowman” in the sense of the folk art he’s creating in his yard with the mysterious shaggy man-like beast of the Himalayas. But clearly Snuffy is well steeped in the lore, so I guess we just have to admit that Jughaid is kind of dumb.

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Blondie, 1/20/25

The joke here really ought to be that we all know that there are plenty of cereal varieties with marshmallows out there sold in boxes with colorful cartoon art on them, but Dagwood simply doesn’t encounter them anymore, because he’s an adult, plus (and this is where Blondie’s carefully neutral “Oh?” comes in) he doesn’t actually do the grocery shopping so he assumes that because he doesn’t see them, they don’t exist. But given Dagwood’s appetites and predilections, I find it very hard to believe that he doesn’t go to the grocery store daily, wandering the aisles in a sort of dazed mania. Anyway, I do like the box of adult cereal here, which features a picture of a boring middle aged guy with a blank facial expression eating cereal on it. You can almost hear him saying the popular catchphrase, “I am eating this cereal for breakfast, as an adult.”

Shoe, 1/20/25

I’m really liking the Perfesser’s goggle eyes of horror here. Sorry, buddy! You are not excused from single combat with Biz in the rough and tumble marketplace of ideas!

Mary Worth, 1/20/25

Wow, Dawn’s already learned about negging from Dirk, and now the lessons have moved on to gaslighting! Truly a wondrous journey of discovery awaits her.

Dennis the Menace, 1/20/25

Well, I mean, he’s celebrating this birthday and the only people at his “party” are his wife and the five-year-old neighbor kid who he fucking hates, so, yeah, I think the thrill of living is gone for Mr. Wilson generally, Dennis.

Family Circus, 1/20/25

OK, Thel, before you answer this, think carefully: has the children’s religious education to date covered Exodus 22:18?